Sure, what lurks beneath the surface might seem terrifying.
I’d recommend you hope and pray to the Jesus you never actually run into it…
“…and then, kids, a blood-drenched beast arose from Youthfront Lake and let out a mournful roar…”
Jimmy paused in his story and looked at me for approval.
“Um, yeah, ----- you, Jimmy.”
Needless to say, he did not get my approval.
“Yo, Circle C is a Christian camp,” Jimmy tut-tutted me. “I know it’s been a long day, but you’ll need to stop dropping the F-bombs by time the kids show up tomorrow.”
Jimmy was a buddy from Kansas State, and had kindly took me up on my offer for a week of co-cabin counseling with me. Wrangling 10-12 pre-teen and/or teenage boys for 5 straight days could get exhausting, so it was also nice to have a familiar face to help me out (normally, it would be just some rando who Brian, the boss of all of us cabin leaders, recruited off the streets of Kansas City).
He had shown up Sunday evening to prepare before the campers showed up the next morning, and fortunately, we got the work out of the way to quickly and found ourselves with time on our hands. Unfortunately, that was when things literally went sideways.
And for some reason, Jimmy thought it would be fun to regale our campers with the tale of our little misadventure. I disagreed.
“Dude, too soon, ya think?” I glared at him and rubbed my forehead, which was still throbbing.
“Ok,” Jimmy conceded, “but I still think telling it from my point of view is more riveting…”
“Let’s see who can swim underwater the furthest,” Jimmy challenged me as he gestured towards the oversized pond the camp had so generously named ‘Youthfront Lake.’
“Sure, why not?” I said, accepting his challenge. “We’re young with some free time to do stupid stuff like this on our hands. What do we have to lose?”
Earlier that evening, the two of us and a third unnamed co-conspirator had donned swim trunks and had been bouncing each other off The Blob. If you don’t know what a Blob is, it’s basically a ~40’x8′ inflatable water pillow that sits in the lake and–you know what, let’s not waste more time on this tangentially relevant detail, and you can just check it out here yourself if you’re curious.
Next to The Blob, about 20 feet down the ‘coastline’, was a dock that wrapped around a swimming pool-like area. This 20 feet in between the two would be our swimming lane, the idea being that we would dive in and not come up until well out into the open water of the lake.
Since the gauntlet had been thrown down to me, I nobly went first.
I dove in and took a couple of initial powerful strokes to get my momentum going. But on the third stroke, my left hand caught one of the underwater ropes that held The Blob down.
“Oh, snap, I’m swimming right into The Blob…better course-correct slightly to the right,” I thought to myself, because, you know, I didn’t want to waste my lung capacity on saying it out loud underwater.
A gentle swerve back in that direction and I was on my way to making Jimmy rue the day he decided to challenge my aquatic skills. In my mind I was keeping track of my location.
“Three…two…one…and I should be hitting open wat–“
My train of thought was interrupted by…sonar?
Yup…that’s the only way to describe it.
“So this is what it feels like to be a bat,” I thought, as I immediately became aware–via a complete 3-dimensional rendering in the darkness of my mind–of a vertical rectangular object that must have been made out of…steel?
“Yes, that’s definitely steel,” I mumbled incoherently to myself as my skull wrapped around the object that had positioned itself squarely between my eyes.
A good full beat passed as I floated there, completely stunned and completely submersed, my noggin ringing like a mother ----- bell.
Eventually I came to my senses and, upon groping about, I was delighted to realize that what I had collided with was a ladder. You know, like one of those ladders that you can climb to get out of the swimming pool. Or a lake. Or Youthfront Lake, even.
Half conscious, I pulled myself up the ladder and out of the lake.
“Did I win?” I sputtered through a stream of blood gushing out of the gaping split in my forehead…
“So…you probably need get that stitched up,” mused the camp nurse’s adult son–also a nurse–as he attempted to stem the Crimson Tide that flowed down my once-handsome visage. “You want me to take you to the ER in KC?”
First, I was lucky that any medical professional had been at camp, since it was the weekend and the place was usually a ghost town. Second, I was lucky to have health insurance.
Maybe.
“Uhh…I would go to the ER, but…well, I think I have insurance, but I’m not quite sure,” I replied.
“What do you mean? How do you not know whether you have insurance?” he asked.
“Well, I signed up for the temporary insurance that was offered at cabin leader orientation, but I never received any type of card or anything like that. So…”
“…so you don’t want to risk showing up at the ER and getting stuck with a $2,000 bill? I gotchya, bro. Lemme just slap a daub of super glue and a butterfly BandAid (TM) on there, and let go and let the Jesus take care of the rest…”
“Dear Sir, unfortunately we are unable to offer you health insurance coverage, as you reside outside or area of coverage…” read the letter I found in my P.O. Box upon returning to Manhattan (KS) at the end of the summer.
“Well, if that’s not ironic,” I muttered as I tore up the letter, threw it in the trash can, lit it on fire, and burned down the entire post office.
Just kidding. I only burned down 60% of the post office.
Well, at least the mystery of whether I had insurance during The Sonar Incident was solved: I did not.
And why didn’t I? Because I had used the only address I actually had when I signed up for the insurance: the one in the college town where I lived the other 9-10 months out of the year when I wasn’t off gallivanting at summer camp.
And why didn’t I find this out until it was way too late? Because I had used my stupid ----- permanent address.
I feel like the system is broken somewhere in this asinine loop of circular logic…
The point of the story is that it can be pretty ----- scary not knowing whether or not you have health insurance when you’re bleeding out like Carrie. Well, I guess it’s not as scary knowing you don’t have any insurance at all.
You know, on second thought, the system isn’t broken on account of which address you use to sign up for health insurance; it’s broken on account of your address–that part that ends in “U.S.A.”
You want a horror story? Behold the U.S. healthcare system. Don’t let uber-rich assholes convince you otherwise: healthcare is a human right, and the Land of the Free is atrocious when it comes to actually taking care of its citizens in this respect (amongst others).
Land of the Free? More like Land of the Free to Bleed Out in the Street…
*sigh*
Happy Halloween, everybody. ScarFace, out…
Content created on: 28/29 October 2023 (Sat/Sun)
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